Take a leaf out of Waterstone’s book

Take a leaf out of Waterstone’s book

Among the many excellent speakers at the Kos convention, founder of Waterstone’s booksellers Tim Waterstone was the pick of the bunch.

He hardly mentioned the word ‘travel’ in his speech but he still managed to give hope to agents running their own businesses.

Not surprisingly, Waterstone talked extensively about looking after your staff.

His favourite story was about when he went into one of his shops and a customer was being rude to a member of staff.

This customer was demanding that the employee go and get a book from a shelf, even though she was bogged down with lots of customers to serve.

The employee was handling the situation well and trying to get the customer to see reason but he was having none of it and talked to her as if she was a slave to be ordered around.

Waterstone, observing the situation, went up to the customer and said:”Get out, and if you ever come in here again, I’ll call the police!”

There can’t be an agent in the country who hasn’t wanted to say that at some stage.